Busy, busy Turtle Days at Gnaraloo… With a sprinkle of Christmas

The work load for the GTCP 2016/17 team does not seem to go down though the Christmas holidays are around the corner. The female turtles are not giving us a break, no sir! This week their activity levels have gone up. We are getting more turtles coming up the beaches of the Gnaraloo Bay Rookery, to the point that our beautiful 102cm wide Green turtle came up again to nest! Exciting, right!? Now we have officially 3 green turtle nests, 2 within our survey period, at Gnaraloo Bay! This means that for the new year we will be having lots of green and loggerhead hatchlings. Get prepared for cuteness overload for 2017!

The increase of turtle activity at Gnaraloo has even resulted in that yesterday morning, the day survey team managed to see a loggerhead turtle on the beach! This is not very common as most nesting female normally come up throughout the night, before sunrise. Our morning turtle had managed to dragged herself up to the car park area! Silly turtle… “Lucky/not lucky” she didn’t lay any eggs, but made a fake nest (cheeky). It was lucky in the sense that; we did not want to risk hatchlings coming out when we come driving through for surveys. Unlucky, because of all that effort from the female to come up and the team wishes for as many turtle nests as possible this season. I wonder how many nests will be made on Christmas day…

Though the GTCP team is busy with all the scientific work this season, Christmas has not been forgotten here at Gnaraloo. In other corners of the World, people are stressing around preparing for Christmas with goodies, Christmas dinners, and buying all the presents. We won’t particularly be stressing about that this year, but we have started the Christmas vibes. As every Sunday is from now till Christmas day is an advent day, our team made a lovely Second day of Advent dinner. We created an advent crown, Gnaraloo style, a mini Christmas tree and a lovely Christmas dinner by Imogen Webster (Thank you!).

GTCP 2016/17 team wishes everyone a lovely and merry Christmas month!

Sophia Dahl